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Day 03 - Smarter Food (Elementary)

We began and ended today with our Design Challenge 2: design a kitchen appliance for a family to use. This design challenge was special because our IBM volunteer, Amy, was our “user”. We started by interviewing her about some problems she faces in the kitchen and were able to define her main problem as “Having to Cook Multiple Meals”. Then we began to ideate and we came up with lots of great ideas. Finally, we narrowed down our choices and began to plan our prototypes: A Light Speed Food Machine, A Food Making Robot and a Self-Growing Garden.

In the middle of the day we took a break from prototyping to listen to two great presentations from Kary with EcoCycle. Kary taught us all about Food Waste, composting and “red-wiggler” worms. We even got to see a few worms up close!

After Kary left we returned to our problem and completed our prototypes. We worked really hard today and cooperated on group prototypes. (Miss Vorhaus was particularly proud of our team work and cooperation!)

Each group took some time to present their solution and prototype to our class and their user. They included a lot of neat features in each prototype: Solar panels, a warming/ cooling station, a dishwasher and even a set of speakers!

Amy, our volunteer/ user, was very impressed with all our solutions and prototypes!

Innovation Center

The Innovation Center is a comprehensive research and development center. It provides an environment tailored to aspiring student inventors, designers and entrepreneurs.